New Updates

First of all, I would like to apologize for the lack of updates. I know it has been months, but I was getting frustrated with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which left me with a real lack of will to write. This not only affected by fiction writing, but, obviously, my blogging as well. I was still using Dragon for my online role-playing games, but that was it.

Yesterday, I installed Windows 10 Technical Preview and found that Dragon was incompatible with it. So, if I wanted to keep typing at all, I had to switch to Windows Speech Recognition. Surprisingly, I’m finding it easier to work with than Dragon. It isn’t as accurate, so I have to spend more time correcting mistakes, but I find that those mistakes don’t often happen again. It is learning my voice much faster than Dragon ever did. The correction box pops up faster as well, and overall I’m finding it much more pleasant experience. So, to see if this lasts well I try to write something longer than a paragraph, I thought it was time to finally update this blog.

Of course, I am a creative person. While I have not been writing, I needed a creative outlet. In addition to my 3 D art, I rediscovered a love of photography that I once had in college. Back then, I was afraid to take many pictures because I was using a film camera. Film was expensive to buy and develop, so I hesitated in taking any pictures because I did not want to waste the money. This got so bad that I never took a picture, and I eventually forgot the joy of getting a good shot.

That all changed last summer, while looking at some Google plus posts by a friend who is also an amateur photographer. I commented that I wish I could take shots that were as good as hers, and she replied that all it took was practice. I knew that a point and shoot camera would ever be enough for me, as I wanted to be able to control depth of field even if I couldn’t remember exactly how to go about that. So, I went on to Ebay and found an incredible deal on an Olympus PEN E-PL2mirrorless camera. Mirrorless cameras are a new technology, relatively speaking, and this was an early model of that technology, but it was in my price range of “not very much at all”. By the time the camera arrived, I had spent enough time on YouTube to refresh myself on how to work a camera and some basics of photographic composition.

Later, I picked up a book that would – and still is – teach me a lot: Stunning Digital Photography by Tony Northrup. It refreshed me on what I knew already, but also helped me understand things that I’ve always struggled with, and taught me things I’ve never known. I still have a lot to learn, and being stuck indoors most of the time I don’t get to take pictures as often as I would like, but like my digital art it’s a hobby I enjoy enough to not mind spending money on it.

That brings me to the site updates. First of all, I’ve updated my portfolio to function as sliders, rather than the small pictures and text that was there before. I’ve also added a new portfolio for my photography. Finally, I’ve rearranged the menus to give the site a more professional feel. This also meant changing the landing page. It did not seem very professional to have my landing page be the blog. I’m not sure I’ll keep it this way, but I want to try it out for a while.

Well, that’s it for now. I’m not sure I will get back into writing yet, but I hope to. In any case, I will try to update the blog more often.